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Advogato.org: The Thrill of OpenSource Programming

"This article was written by me a while back after I made the
first release of my first OpenSource project ever, gLife. I wrote
it right then so I could capture the essence and the emotions that
I felt right after release my first every project to the OpenSource
community. Also just prior to that project I had written my first
ever patch for a program (bug-buddy), naturally it didn't get
accepted. :)"

"I recently started work on my first ever open-source project.
It is also my first ever Linux coding project, my first C
application, my first Gtk+/GNOME program. I've only dabbled before
in TurboPascal so this was a big thing for me. The project is
called gLife, basically an Artificial Life simulation, but with a
twist (tries to simulate a society). It's still in its very infant
stages. I first started this project on Windows, using C++ for a
research paper for high-school. I started work on this project
around the beginning of December. I write this editorial because I
was told by one person "I still don't understand why people code
things and give them away for free". Another reason why I write
this, is to remind people of the "fun" of programming. I want
people to take a step back and remember their first
significant/real programming project. I want people to remember
what it feels like...to stay in touch with their roots and remember
why they're doing all of this."

"Personally, I started out this project with one simple goal in
mind: Educate myself. I wanted to learn something other than
TurboPascal (the only language that I've been "taught" in
high-school/university so far). I also wanted to learn how to
program using GNOME and the Gtk+ widget toolkit (even though this
was not one of my objectives, I also learned how to use libglade
and glade). I also wanted to teach myself how to program in
general. We all know those simple tic-tac-toe programs we're forced
to do in every preparatory course for Computer Science. They teach
you very little on how to work on a large project, or on how to
utilize the various programming tools that are out there. While
these projects are necessary to acquaint the beginner to Computer
Science, they do not teach any real-world scenarios. They do not
teach you how to use the bleeding edge technologies that are
important for a programming career. The reason I wrote gLife
initially was to learn what my university still hasn't taught
me."